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Windows vs. Linux, round infinity

A new Microsoft study hits the web sizing up the company's server technology …

Microsoft released a study (PDF) today placing the Windows server System up against SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). The study, conducted by Herbert Thompson of Security Innovations Inc., was paid for by Microsoft. As might be expected, almost every result from the experiment favored Microsoft, but readers were warned that the study was ultimately inconclusive due to sample size.

The sample, although too small to provide conclusive statistical comparisons, illustrates the methodology and begins to shed light on some key model differences between the platforms. A welcomed next step would be a more expansive study based on this foundational methodology with a larger sample size, additional business requirement scenarios and that looks at a wide array of platforms.

The one-year study consisted of upgrading and administrating SLES 8 and Windows Server 2000 in an e-commerce scenario. By the end of the study, the Linux system was upgraded to SLES 9 and the Microsoft system was running Windows Server 2003. Each operating system was administered by three seasoned veterans of their respective operating systems. The patching and upgrading process was conducted through the application of monthly patches with business requirement upgrades every three months.

We found that measuring reliability in a meaningful way meant understanding solution availability as systems change over time with patches and updates, new business requirements, and other environmental changes. It became clear that the key to managing reliability was to choose platforms and applications that enabled IT to be efficient and facilitated a simpler environment over time.

Each system administrator's goal was to patch and update his system without compromising security. Valid patches were ones received directly from the vendor, or from a verified third-party vendor. If a system administrator used software not directly authenticated by the vendor, then his system was marked as unsupported, which emitted a negative mark.

The results of the experiment showed that Windows had fewer dependency failures, took less time to update, had fewer patches and had zero compatibility issues. Each Windows administrator completed every task on time. The only major issue that Windows faced was frequent reboots, which was partially offset by batch updating. The rest of the issues found in the Windows Server System were minor, such as resetting database table types and configuration issues with port numbers.

As one might expect, the Linux system did not even come close to stacking up to Windows Server. The "granularity and high modularity of Linux" led each administrator down a different path when issues occurred due to the ambiguity of the problem. The Linux administrators were also portrayed as being confused when updates needed to be found, and at one point, a system was rendered useless by a GLIBC upgrade that went awry. On a positive note, once the SUSE server was upgraded to version 9, everything went back to a state of normal operation.

Overall, the study displays Microsoft as king of the server hill. The 49-page study (which I managed to read in its entirety), although claiming to be unbiased, reads like a huge piece of Microsoft propaganda. The Linux administrators were portrayed as lab monkeys at certain points, whereas the Microsoft administrators came off as drones that just went out to Windows Update for all their system needs. It's very difficult to read this study without believing that an obvious bias was in place.